The observation from comparing different countries after the fact seems to be that the economy suffers from the epidemic itself (voluntary change of habits plus hospitalizations) as much it does from lockdowns, so the argument is that if you avoided lockdowns then you got both the increased deaths from covid and also the deaths because people lost jobs and are depressed.
The economic issues and the associated death increase was avoided only in countries which successfully managed to limit the spread of disease, which generally involved aggressive early lockdowns.
My question would then be, what is the natural life expectancy of a suicide or opiate overdose victim, versus that of a person that would have survived COVID only with medical intervention.
We should be looking at deferral of death, not just death count. Death is certain to everyone and I am reluctant to value everyone’s remaining life expectancy equally, at least as far as the healthcare system is concerned.
In the U.K. there’s no evidence of any change in suicide rates in 2020 (it’s normally about 6,000 a year). Registration delays means that we don’t know the numbers for 2020, but early indications are not much change (suicide has been increasing though and is at a record high)
A much bigger issue is the lost of QALYs from lockdown but not from deaths, including the socio-economic impacts.
ONS have a more through report than a Sunday morning post from a phone.
The people who mainly benefitted from lockdown measures are the over 60s
The people who mainly lost out were the under 35s
The recovery plan needs to address this - including fixing the massive wealth disparity. A generation of property owning shareholders who have retired have seen their wealth and income balloon over the last year (and decade). But it won’t, millennials will be screwed.
Now on the other side do lock-downs cause less use of healthcare? And will it result in health-debt? If there is less preventive maintenance done on population will that results increased deaths in future? Thinking of elective surgeries and so on...
The economic issues and the associated death increase was avoided only in countries which successfully managed to limit the spread of disease, which generally involved aggressive early lockdowns.